Power in a Union

On recognition agreements

A Union is more powerful if the majority or a large majority of the work force are in membership and that the employer knows this. The law is such that if a majority of a workforce votes in favour, an employer must grant a recognition agreement. A recognition agreement means that the Union can negotiate collectively on your behalf. Without such agreements, your union officials can only speak to management if defending you in disciplinary processes, or if pursuing a grievance.

Collective bargaining is most frequently associated with pay, but can also be about redundancies, performance management, sickness policies, health and safety issues, equality’s issues, policy associated with leave or data protection practices. There are a number of you that have asked us to intervene on collective bargaining issues over the last three years that the current branch leadership.

In terms of winning recognition agreements, one factor in our favour is that the law does not specify the nature of the entity or business unit to have to grant Union recognition. If working for a large multi-site or highly sectionalised business, then the designated workplace for which recognition is sought can be quite small compared with the company as a whole. It could for instance be one restaurant in one hotel in a chain, or one shop in a chain, or one work team on a site.

On record keeping

One factor inhibiting the Branch’s ability to organise and thus win is that we do not know where many of you work if you pay by direct debit and you may have changed workplace from when you first joined.

It would help immensely if you updated your records using the Union’s web site

How to update your records,

Establish a personal login on the Union’s web site,

Update your membership record with your current workplace/employer & current email, while there, tell us as much as you can about yourself using the web forms.

The Union’s website is not multi-lingual.

During lock-down it is even more important that we have your email address (or phone) as we are actively managing the meeting schedules replacing meetings with Zoom meetings and we need to keep in touch.